Review: Bob’s Burgers “Tappy Tappy Tappy Tap Tap Tap”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Tina is invited to Josh’s tap show, but thinks he like likes her, so tries to put him down easily. But after an injury on stage, she sets out to find the supposed culprit and THEN formally friendzone him. However, her investigation of harassing multiple students leads her to realize Josh injured HIMSELF accidentally. Also they both just want to be friends. Yay!

Meanwhile, Louise and Gene try making their own burgers to get one made the Burger of the Day, but they both turn out to be terrible, so Bob and Linda call it a tie to spare their feelings.

OUR TAKE
In our darkest hour, Bob’s Burgers returns to the airwaves with the remainder of its tenth season episodes. And huh, we’re dusting off JOSH now? Season 3 Josh? Lactose intolerance having, chocolate milk loving, turtle petting (according to the wiki) Josh? Yeah, I guess so. Interesting time to do it too, since his voice actor, Ben Schwartz, just starred in the third highest grossing film of the year (so far, for obvious reasons), Sonic the Hedgehog. And they brought him back for a pretty good Tina episode, as she goes full Murder on the Orient Express looking for the apparent saboteur, powered by the ability to dream up complicated romantic drama logic like only Tina can. Pretty much all the comedy comes from how much Tina is over-blowing everything and terrifying everyone with her need to solve this crime that she herself invented. Also a surprisingly good “Lost” reference that made me both laugh AND internally shriek in terror at how long ago Lost was!

Then there’s the B plot with the rest of the family, which is pretty small in comparison, but still an cute little bit about seeing Gene and Louise actually take a crack at cooking for once, something that Bob has apparently wanted for a long time. Of course, they’re terrible at it (though committing to a passion even though you suck could be argued to be a bigger theme of the show overall), but in this case that comes from them just being children who think stuff that’s the same color automatically tastes good and that gum goes into a burger because it kind of has flavor. Yet what’s most interesting about this plot is that it actually plays into a theme with Tina’s, that being that being honest with your feelings and your loved ones is better…or not when it’s hurting their feelings? Both of these things can be true, so it’s interesting to see how Tina’s problems are created by her NOT being honest with her feelings, while Bob and Linda must SUPPRESS their feelings in order to not crush Gene and Louise’s hopes of cooking good themed Burgers of the Day. Not that I expect the show to really go into exploring that any time soon, but it’s still something interesting to see if the show TAPS into it somewhere down the line. Maybe in Season 20 or 30 if I’m guessing right. In the meantime, more Season 10!